


Choosing The Road Less Taken

by Stoney



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 02:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stoney/pseuds/Stoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Takes place during S2 Finale, post-Gerard's disappearance.  Stiles is pissed.  Heartbroken, but mostly pissed.  Derek makes it better.  (References beatings Stiles took in the basement, this is just my take on what happened down there.)</p><p>Beta'd by the fabulous flaming_muse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choosing The Road Less Taken

Stiles was pissed. He had been confused, really unhappy, incredibly shocked and now he was just royally, painfully pissed. Scott was his best friend, had been since turning up with a deck of Yu-Gi-Oh cards in third grade when they were officially known as the dorks of their class, both routinely spending recess and lunch all alone and finally ready to, you know, _not_.

They had been there for each other through everything, like, they had leveled up to wartime foxhole-sharing friendship by this point, or at least that's what Stiles had thought. Scott's mom crying in her room after her husband – Scott's dad – walked out on his family. Stiles' dad drinking a little too much and singing brokenly until it quieted down to desperate breathing against the master bedroom door like he couldn't bear to even go in there after Stiles' mom had died. Stiles' mom _dying_. 

They even had their “want to go see a dead body?” _Stand By Me_ adventure, actually seeing said body and a whole lot of shit they hadn't even considered to be in the realm of possibility, and did Stiles abandon his newly-monstered best friend? No, Stiles did not. Stiles embraced his newly-monstered best friend and became the Pepper Potts to his Iron Man, in fact.

In a non-sexual manner of speaking.

Over the past six months or so, Stiles had come close to dying on multiple occasions, had come close to watching his family, friends and loved ones – and Derek – come close to dying, and he always made a point to, you know, _check on them later._ That was kind of the unspoken rule: someone you loved almost died, you give them the ol' ring-a-ding on the fucking phone, at the very least.

Stiles had been _kidnapped_ , for fuck's sake. Kidnapped by Scott's girlfriend's psychotic and creepily strong grandfather, locked in a goddamn _torture chamber_ with two of their, well, friends was a bit strong to call what he was to Erica and Boyd before that night, seeing as they'd tried to kill him once or twice – sure, it wasn't their focus, because the focus had been to kill Lydia and anything that got in their way, so it wasn't really personal towards Stiles, but they were definitely on the “friends” list the night after the game. Wartime foxhole friends, actually. And, well, literally.

And what'd been Stiles' first instinct when he picked himself up off the basement floor where he'd been thrown and found them strung up, gagged and crying – Jesus, Boyd had been crying and he was like a living, walking man muscle of masculinity and what Gerard had been doing to him was bad enough to make Big Guy tear up? Yeah, his first instinct had been to help them out. And of course it was because for all intents and purposes, Stiles was a good guy. Stiles cared. Stiles was the guy that bought a flat screen tv on the chance that it might make a beautiful girl smile and maybe not hate him. Okay, that wasn't really altruistic of him, but still. The record showed that Stiles was someone that looked out for people. 

When push came to shove, and did he know from shoving and he was seriously getting tired of being manhandled – werehandled? Hmm, Derek was usually just Derek and not all “Grr, Alpha Wolf!” when he pushed and shoved and backed Stiles up against the wall, all crowding up in Stiles' personal space which was terrifying and that was why Stiles' heart rate exploded because that was nerve-wracking, and they were really going to need to talk about that, he and Derek, because he was not equipped to deal with the complexities of life as the human friend to a pack of werewolves while they hunted a freaking _lizard_ beast while being hunted themselves by some deranged fairy tale avenging fundamentalists, with the addition of losing the love of his life to said lizard beast-cum-werewolf – and yeah, that love had been unrequited, true, but that shit fucking hurt – and having manly, mysterious Derek putting his huge, strong hands on Stiles' shoulders and just...putting him where Derek wanted Stiles to be, making him feel all funny and breathless and loopy in his – wait, where was he?

He was royally fucking pissed, right.

He pulled his Jeep into the driveway and sat in front of his house for a few minutes, rubbing away the tears from his face with the sleeve of his shirt, his thumbs drumming a crazy rhythm on his steering wheel. Scott didn't even know what had happened at the Argents', what had been done to him. Scott didn't even know that Allison was a part of it. Of his freaking _torture._ Okay, it had been Gerard and some of the endless supply of black-clothed thugs the hunters seemed to have an endless access to, but Allison had been home when it all had gone down, so who knew how involved she was. And hey, let's not forget that Allison had been the one to catch Boyd and Erica so they could be chained up and fucking electrocuted on a continuous loop of what-the-fuck-is-this-shit-we-sit-at- _lunch_ -with-them-Allison! So as far as Stiles was concerned just then, she was complicit.

He banged his head on the steering wheel lightly before shutting off the engine and smacking the palm of his hand on the dashboard in anger. Who had Scott rushed to when Gerard was stopped? Allison. Allison, who had a freaking crossbow in her other hand, and hey, Isaac had some freaking arrow holes in his leather jacket and body, would you look at that! Scott didn't even care that he had taken her hand while she was wearing her friggin' torture gloves. And what kind of normal, sane teenage girl has a pair of torture gloves in the first place?

Every time she had dumped Scott, who had been there to pick up the pieces? Every time they got back together, who had to sit on the end of a ridiculously long phone call detailing all of the love Scott had for each of her dimples or for the way her hair smelled? And every time they did something new in the bedroom – or the Argents' laundry room for that one thing that made Stiles blush just thinking about – who had to listen to the seriously graphic details, and for the love of God, did Scott have to be so descriptive with what sex stuff they did? Because it's not like Stiles was ever going to have a chance to try even _half_ of that stuff at the rate he's going. Or, you know, try _any_ of it from the looks of things. 

And hey, who'd spent days running back and forth between the two of them when they were pretending to be broken up in order to deliver messages to the point where he had to steal Scott's inhaler just to keep up? And he'd done all of that because that's what best friends _did_ : they looked out for each other.

Not even a fucking reply of 'K' to his dad's text that Stiles' was finally home after being beaten to a bloody pulp by a crazed octogenarian that surprise! Could totally take Stiles, and how about how emasculating _that_ was to think about?

He kicked the car door open and slid out of the vehicle, not looking back as he jabbed his foot behind himself to slam it back shut, storming up to the front door as quickly as his limp would allow. Gerard had stomped repeatedly on the outside of his knee last night; the Ace bandage Stiles had hastily wrapped around it after getting his dad calmed down enough to let him shower wasn't really cutting it, and the pain meds Gerard had shot into Stiles before one of the hunter thugs dropped him off near his house had long since worn off. Plowing into a Kanima and watching said Kanima turn into a werewolf who got to kiss and declare undying love to the girl of his dreams had sort of sobered him all the way up.

Great.

Gerard had known that werewolves would be able to smell how injured he was, and that they wouldn't want humans to get involved. Stiles figured that the plan was to enrage Scott further and get him to make a mistake. But ha, the joke was on Gerard, because no werewolves had noticed how injured he was because none of them had bothered to check in once they'd heard he was back home. And they had been too focused on Jackson's crazy transformation from lizard to perfectly sculpted human to possibly-redeemed werewolf to pay attention to him as he left. Scott had barely noticed the “scratch” on his cheek, for crying out loud.

He pushed his way inside the house, calling out, “Dad?”

Nothing.

And there was something else to be angry about. He wasn't going to lie to himself that everything currently wrong with him and his dad was strictly because of the whole “werewolf/gotta lie to my dad about all the things” situation he found himself in, but it was at least a good 80% of why things were bad with his dad. Bad like relationship damning bad, not “my son is driving me up the wall with being nosy” bad. Bad like, “I can't look my son in the eye because I know he's lying to me about big things and this isn't who his mother and I raised him to be” bad.

Stiles made his way to the kitchen, looking for a note, message, carrier pigeon, anything. Instead he found a plate with a tea towel draped over it to cover up the casserole his dad had heated up for dinner, the dinner that was now cold. The dinner he missed because he decided that enough was enough and he was going to find Lydia, keep her from accidentally killing herself, and hopefully stop the kanima and Gerard in one fell swoop.

And hey, look at that, he kind of did. And yet here he was, in a quiet house with no one there to tell him thank you, no one there to hold him, cry on his shoulder, no one to say they loved him with the kind of love that fucking brought someone back from the dead, and how was this his life? Seriously. How was that even...

Yeah, okay, so loving Lydia was a long-shot. Deep down he knew it never would work, of course he knew that. Nothing could ever come from hoping it would happen one day, but hope was kind of something that kept him going when he couldn't bear the smell of antiseptic coming from his mom's room before she died. Hope was something that kept him checking on his dad's eating habits and the level of booze in his dad's whiskey bottles. Hope was what had him cheering along with his teammates during whatever stupid speech the coach had thought up on the fly just to ride the bench for another season.

Hope that his best friend, the one with the super strength and super hearing and actual legitimate Spidey senses that tingled would reach out with a clawed hand and stop Gerard's heavy boot from crunching on his lower rib for the fifth time. Hope that the text he'd sent Derek “argents have e & b” would lead to a situation where he didn't struggle to meet his own reflection in the mirror, unable to see anything but Erica's huge, watery eyes as he was dragged up the stairs and away from her and Boyd's dangling bodies to be subjected to who knew what kind of torture.

He climbed the stairs favoring his good leg and feeling that he had been completely broken and filled with lead. Yeah, he'd helped stop the Kanima, delivering Lydia to the love of her life. He'd helped stop Gerard, delivering his best friend to the asshole's granddaughter. He'd stopped Derek and Peter from killing Jackson, adding yet another lie to the list of things that were making his father pull even further away.

It just...it fucking sucked to be just days away from turning seventeen and already feeling that life really was a never-ending series of soul-sucking disappointments and heartbreak. This wasn't the life he imagined for himself. This wasn't who he was.

He sighed, pushing along towards his bedroom. The only sound as he made his way down the hall was the slide-thump of his feet, echoing in the empty house. He just felt completely and utterly alone. God, was this what Derek felt like all the time? Having no one and every decision you make ultimately the right one, but no one giving a shit? That no matter what you tried to do for the people you cared about, you always ended up by yourself nursing your wounds?

No wonder Derek was so damn grumpy all the time.

He pushed the door open to his bedroom, wanting nothing more than to flop back down face first – remembering that when he did that after showering a few hours prior, his fractured rib had sent a shock of pain through him all over again, so maybe flopping wasn't going to be a smart idea and easing was the way to go – and jerked in surprise at the sight of Derek standing by his open window, looking out at the night.

He hissed in pain from the sudden motion, which caused Derek's head to twist around to look at him.

“Jesus Christ, Derek, warn a guy before you just pop in all brooding and sinister!” Stiles said, carefully leaning back against the door frame with his hand pressed to his chest just over his racing heart beat. He kind of deserved to have the rest of the night be shock free, what the hell.

“Are you okay?”

Stiles looked up at that. With the exception of his dad earlier, that was the first time anyone had bothered to ask. “I'll be fine,” he said dismissively.

“You smell like you're hurt.”

Stiles made a face, pushing off the wall to shuffle to his bed. _Now_ someone notices, when it doesn't matter any more. “Stop sniffing me; that's weird.” He settled onto the edge, his eyes closing in relief from the weight being taken off his bad knee. “And that's because I am. And I swear, you're like Beetlejuice but I don't even have to say your name three times; you just show up.”

Derek lifted one eyebrow at him in reply, but Stiles was so over being embarrassed by his wealth of pop culture references at this point. 

“You only had to say his name three times to get him to physically appear and do something for you,” Derek said and kind of in an exasperated tone, to boot. “He showed up all the time unannounced.”

Stiles' jaw dropped. “Is that... huh. Well, Derek, you have officially blown my mind tonight,” he said, pushing back with his hands to drag his legs up onto his mattress and wincing. “And considering I drove over a lizard creature that was about to sprout wings officially making Jackson a dragon, watched you and Peter kill him, and then saw him come back to life in front of '80s rock video smoke due to a flippin' house key, a little Alpha claw stabbing and a pretty girl's kiss, that's saying something.”

“Why aren't your legs working?” Derek asked, his hands hanging limply by his sides. He looked like he wanted to take a step forward and help, and Stiles was grateful that he wasn't. He felt brittle and strung too tight, and the fact that the one person he was pretty sure hated him was the only one making sure that he was okay was pretty much breaking his heart all over again. Which sucked because that whole Lydia declaring her undying love for the biggest D-bag on the planet when Stiles had bared his soul to her not an hour before should have done the job. 

Turns out: nope.

“Leg. Just the one. Gerard--” Stiles blanched and went still as a spike of pain pierced the center of his kneecap. With the adrenaline completely gone, all of the bangs and hits he had taken during the game the night before coupled with the beating he took after the game were all making themselves known. His hand stilled from where he had tried to pull the leg of his jeans up to see for himself; he had been so focused on getting clean after being in the dank basement at the Argents' all night that he hadn't bothered cataloging his many bruises earlier in the shower.

Derek was by his side in the blink of an eye, his hand hovering over Stiles' knee. “What did he do.” Not a question, of course, it was never a question with Mr. Tall, Dark and Serious. Just a command to explain.

“Stuff, Derek. He did bad, evil villain stuff.” Stiles eased down onto his pillows, pressing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, trying to get out of his mind the image of Gerard's fucked up smile as he swung his fist back into Stiles' face, choking off Stiles' pleas for him to stop. “How are Erica and Boyd? You got them, right? You and Peter? And we have _got_ to talk about what the hell you're doing with your psychopath uncle seeing as I was there when you freaking killed him a few months ago.”

Derek shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, focused intently on the books in the shelf above the headboard and not on Stiles' face just below. “They weren't there. At the Argents'.”

Stiles was about to speak, but stopped when Derek looked him dead in the eye, saying, “Erica. Boyd. They got themselves out. Chris helped them.”

“Chris?” Stiles sputtered. What, they were on a first name basis with torturing hunter dudes with a disturbingly large amount of V-necks, weapons, deranged relatives and supernatural-killing ammo at hand now?

“Yeah, Chris,” Derek said, almost daring Stiles to speak, which was stupid, because that was a dare that Stiles would take and crush every damn time. Derek cleared his throat, shaking his head slightly before saying, “He shut off the power for them. You know, so they'd stop--” Derek gave a tiny shiver and Stiles noticed that his hands spasmed inside his jacket's pockets. “They got themselves down. Out of there. And-- They, uh, didn't come home. Their scent led away.”

Stiles raised his eyebrows at him, gesturing with his hands because seriously, dude? What the hell was away?

Derek gritted his teeth and looked back at the books. “Away. As in, not home. My home.” He fixed Stiles with an intense look, one that Stiles had defined as meaning “Duh, moron.” It was eloquent and to the point as far as conveying irritation went. Derek sighed and although it seemed like every word he got out cost him something, he said, “They told me before that they wanted to leave. Me. They didn't want me as their alpha.”

Stiles pushed up to his elbows, his neck craned back to allow him to see Derek's face. “So they have a death wish?” 

Derek blinked owlishly. “What.”

“Seriously, learn the beautiful rainbow that is emotional punctuation in human discourse, Derek,” Stiles sighed. “Questions are wonderful things – our entire civilization has been built on people asking them, in fact. Well, more accurately on the answers to said questions, but my point stands.”

Derek just stared back at him. 

“Inflections, duh.”

Derek continued to stare at him. When it started getting to the point of being uncomfortable – but Stiles was not going to look away, dammit – Derek dropped his gaze, shaking his head slightly and asked in a quiet voice, “What?”

“See? You didn't die, your powers weren't taken away in a swirl of light--”

“Stiles,” Derek spat out.

“Okay, jeez.” Stiles looked back at Derek, all kidding aside. “I thought Omegas were supposed to be something dangerous. That it was dangerous for them. That we're stronger as a pack. You,” he quickly corrected feeling embarrassed and honestly, kind of lonely. “You're all stronger as a pack.”

“We are.”

“So... I mean, I know they aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, those two, but they're not dummies, either.”

Derek sighed and cast his eyes about the room. He looked nervous. Actually, he looked really sad and lost, something Stiles was becoming frustratingly familiar with. 

Stiles turned carefully onto his side, shifting his legs back, patting the space next to them on the mattress. “You know, most of our problems have been because no one freaking talks to anyone about anything.”

Derek looked over his shoulder at the bedroom door.

“He's gone for the night. And it wouldn't matter if he was here anyway,” Stiles said, draping his arm over his face and shifting his hips back to make more room. “My dad's been keeping pretty distant lately.” He swallowed thickly, remembering the pained look on his dad's face earlier that night when they'd hugged. Like he didn't recognize his own son anymore.

Derek sank onto the edge of the bed, his hands loose and open between his thighs. “Family's the most important thing, Stiles.”

“I know. And hey, thank you for that perfect segue, D.”

“Don't call me 'D.'”

Stiles huffed out a dry laugh, dragging his arm over his head to look at Derek. “Derek. What the hell, man?”

Derek had a look of confusion on his face that was so out of place for how he normally looked in Stiles' presence it garnered another dry laugh out of Stiles.

“Peter?” Stiles asked. “Crazy guy that almost killed Lydia, me, you, probably every human in a ten mile radius? The guy we set on fire and the guy whose throat you ripped out? Gross, by the way,” Stiles said, fixing Derek with a nauseous scowl.

Derek rubbed the side of his mouth with his index finger and said, “Tastes like chicken.”

Stiles stared at him opened-mouthed for a beat. “That is disgusting. That is also hilarious, because you made a joke like a real, live boy. But mostly that is disgusting.”

Derek flexed his hands, watching the tendons bunch along the backs before letting them dangle in between his legs again. “Peter. Well, funny thing. Your girlfriend brought him back. That's kind of her thing, it seems, bringing people back from the dead.”

“She's not my girlfriend,” Stiles said, unable to help the frustration that bled into his voice.

“Yeah. Sorry about that.”

Stiles blinked up at the ceiling. “Yeah, well. I never had a chance, anyway. It was just...” He waved his hands as if that would encompass the stupidity of ever thinking Lydia Martin would fall for a guy like him.

“It's probably just because he's you know, rich,” Derek said, turning to face Stiles and drawing his leg up on the mattress. “And good looking.”

“Thanks.”

“And has super strength--”

“Okay!”

“--and is popular.”

“Jesus, Derek!”

Derek laid his hand on Stiles' thigh, staring into Stiles' face intently. Which was sort of Derek's usual look, but it was even more intense than usual. “And really loves her.”

“So do I!” Stiles yelled, only slightly embarrassed that his voice broke.

Derek lightly squeezed Stiles' thigh in what he probably thought was a reassuring manner but all Stiles could think about was some guy in head to toe black grabbing him at the shins and tossing him into the back of an SUV.

“I'm not going to hurt you,” Derek said, keeping his hand still but no longer squeezing.

“Yeah, well, that'll be a first.”

Derek's brows knitted together into what Stiles referred to as Look Number Three: Frustration. “I thought we were past that.”

Stiles blinked, mindlessly rubbing at the center of his chest with his fingertips where it felt like the shards of his heart were stabbing him. “What?”

“I haven't...” Derek huffed out a sigh and picked at his fingernail. Stiles' leg felt cold at the loss of Derek's hand. “I haven't purposely hurt you since--”

“Let me stop you there, Shovenstuff, because in most healthy relationships,” Stiles said, pushing himself up to sitting back against his headboard, “people don't catalog the number of times they have hurt someone.”

“Yeah?” Derek looked like he was chewing through his jaw as he got to his feet. He heaved a deep breath and dropped his shoulders, almost looking sad. Like he understood something that Stiles felt that he should be getting, too, but wasn't. Derek shook his head and said quietly, “What would your dad's take on that be?”

Stiles swallowed thickly, his heart thudding painfully in his chest a few times. There was no fucking way he was going to tear up in front of Derek freaking Hale. “That was... dude.”

Derek at least had the grace to look ashamed. For all of one nanosecond, but Stiles saw it.

“I'm just saying,” Derek started before closing his eyes and huffing out a deep breath. “With, you know, the way our lives are--” He gave Stiles a meaningful look to encompass all that was jacked up about werewolves, Kanimas, dead-but-not-dead uncles, and the humans who ran with them. “--sometimes you have to lie to people you care about to keep them safe. And that usually ends up hurting them, true, but it's not the same kind of hurt they could have, is it?” He fixed Stiles with a pointed stare.

Stiles thought about his dad, handcuffed to the wall in the jail and getting pistol-whipped by Matt. And Mrs. McCall not talking to Scott because she couldn't deal with him being a werewolf. His problem with telling his dad about everything – werewolves, hunters, the local vet being a type of shaman for the good guys, who just so happened to be werewolves (except for Peter) – was that it would bring his dad into the realm of Awful Things. It was like a twisted version of The Ring. Once you saw the creepy student film on video tape, you were screwed, only in this case, it was seeing the creepy burned guy in a coma turning into a werewolf and then you were screwed. You were sucked into that world of friendly-on-the-outside principals that were actually serial killers with murderous lizard dudes at their command.

So Scott telling his mom (under duress) resulted in her being terrified of her own son and not speaking to him. Not even saying “goodbye” through a freaking door when Scott left for school. At least his dad was talking to him, somewhat. At least his dad would still hug him even if he didn't completely trust him. Jesus, at least his dad wasn't _dead_. He thought about how lost he would be without his dad, and his hands started shaking.

“So this has been, like, the best pep talk ever, Derek. Thank you very much.”

“You don't need a pep talk,” Derek said. “You're strong enough to handle things.”

“I'm... okay, if there's one thing I know,” Stiles said, gesturing at his busted knee with both hands and a deeply sarcastic look on his face, “it's that I'm not strong enough.”

“Yes,” Derek said, moving impossibly closer; his knees pressed up against the mattress and Stiles nervously shifted away as Derek loomed, hands back in his pockets. He lifted one eyebrow and said, “Stiles. You are.”

This was just... He just did not have the energy for whatever in the hell this was. “Oh, okay,” he snarked, giving Derek a little half-ass salute and a sour look as his tongue touched the edge of the huge cut in his lower lip.

“Stiles.” Derek moved his hand like he was going to grab Stiles' shoulder, but seemed to think better of it and patted Stiles' forearm, giving it a gentle squeeze. “You're one of the strongest of us.”

Stiles quirked an eyebrow at him, because this was just stupid. He didn't need Derek blowing sunshine up his ass, especially not after some old man had totally _handed_ Stiles his ass. His ass, in fact, was officially off limits to Derek. He cleared his throat at that thought because the hell? He did not need to be thinking about ass and Derek and blowing because that made his stomach feel weird and his hands sweaty and he did _not_ want to examine why, because Stiles Stilinski preferred to ignore things until they went away and solved themselves on their own, thank you very much. Stupid Derek, making his thoughts even more crazed and disjointed than usual. Couldn't a guy just mope and stew in peace?

Wait, he was on the cusp of understanding something else about Derek, but was saved from that by Derek talking.

“Us. Our pack. You're pack, Stiles.” His gaze bore into Stiles for a moment, before he sat next to Stiles again on the bed. Stiles noticed with a wild and trapped feeling that it was even closer than before. Derek was a continual Person of Interest in various murder cases, and Stiles – the freaking son of the Sheriff of the county in which Derek was both accused of and exonerated from a few murder cases, point in fact – did not need to have his dad, the Sheriff of yadda yadda all of that previous stuff suddenly come home and find Derek, Person of Interest, with him in his room and on his bed sitting close enough to cuddle. Not that Derek would cuddle. Tough, sombre, leather-wearing guys probably had a code that strictly forbade cuddling and smiles and back massages and okay, this was officially weird, and maybe Derek had some sort of crazy pheromone that he gave off that was making Stiles act...weirder than usual. 

Derek double-tapped the center of Stiles' chest with his fingertips and actually _smiled_ \- well, one corner of his mouth cricked briefly, but for Derek, that was practically a face-splitting grin. It made Stiles' heart rate pick up briefly before leveling out, followed by a strange sense of calm that washed over him. And how crazy was that, that Derek Hale – supermodel-looking dude that had buried next to his burned-out house a couple of dead bodies that just so happened to be his close relatives – was making him feel calm? Like... Stiles belonged? Like he wasn't just the doof with the sweet download speeds and ability to put puzzle pieces together faster than anyone else?

Huh. Pack. They were stronger as a pack, stronger when they were together. They would be better when they were together, they would be their best. And for Stiles, anything that wasn't his itching under the skin, spastic flailing, and always in the way-ness was definitely better. He remembered that the Hale pack had been both werewolves and humans. People that could do things like handle wolfsbane and mountain ash, and wolves that could rip off limbs or could provide whatever brute physicality was needed. They filled in the gaps for each other. _Pack._ It, like, totally made sense right then.

“If you want to be. What's left of it, at least,” Derek murmured.

Right. Scott pretty much declared earlier that he wasn't going to join Derek's pack after all. Which was sort of a dick move, because Derek – while being an asshole that never told anyone the things they needed to know in a timely manner – had put his life on the line for both Stiles and Scott multiple times. Stiles was like, totally even-Steven, though, what with the two hour pool thing and the “Okay, okay, I'll cut your arm off to keep you alive, _jeez!_ event, but Scott had sort of thrown Derek under the bus a few times resulting in Derek actually getting arrested. And then there was that whole Derek saving Scott from Mama Argent almost killing him thing, too. Okay, saying Derek wasn't his alpha anymore earlier that night had been a total dick move.

“Diplomacy,” Stiles muttered. At Derek's questioning glance, he said, “I'll talk to Scott. Eventually.”

Derek twisted towards him, his face actually looking concerned and worried. Stiles would have to add those to the list of emotions he was capable of as proof they existed. 

“You haven't talked to Scott?” Derek asked.

“Yeah, I guess he's too busy trying to fix things with--” Stiles grimaced. He didn't like the incredibly uncharitable thoughts he was having about Scott's girlfriend; he was _not_ going to call her his friend right now, not after being locked up in her crazy house of horrors. He flashed Derek a sour face with a dismissive hand wave.

Derek seemed to understand exactly what he meant, because he nodded his head. “Fucking Argents.”

“Right? I mean, I thought the guys were bad enough, but then you factor in the women, and you see that they're just a genealogy tree of batshit insane with oh my god what is this I don't even branches.”

Derek laughed. Sure, it wasn't some kind of belly laugh, it didn't shake his frame or anything, but he smiled to the point where Stiles distinctly noted dimples appearing suddenly in all of that manly scruff of his, followed by a pleased noise, so Stiles smiled back and counted that as a laugh and as a win.

Why the hell did he care about making Derek laugh? Probably just because it was rare. But yeah, Stiles did that, the whole made the scary, scowling guy laugh. He earned the smile that he was currently sporting, so he decided to keep it. It felt good to smile, honestly. After the past few days he'd had, it felt good to just be with someone, laughing. _He_ felt good. Derek was hanging out with him like a friend, making Stiles feel...good.

Huh.

“You're going to have to give me some sulk time first, though,” Stiles said, running his hand over his head as if that would distract his thoughts from going down the “Is Derek actually a friend, or...?” trail, because that thought led to a very uncomfortable fork in the “Who am I?” road that he was beginning to think he didn't want to get to just yet. And he was hoping that maybe he didn't have to choose a fork down that road. Maybe the other road, the one riddled with ropey forearms and five o'clock shadow and rumbly voices and sheer strength that was ridiculously attractive was more like a feeder road parallel to the road with long, red hair, some seriously hot boobs, tight skirts and lip gloss. Sometimes people straddled two roads, right? Wait, what?

He was snapped out of his runaway thoughts by catching Derek slowly turning to really look at him like Stiles was some kind of bug that needed identifying, and someone seriously needed to make an addendum to the Bestiary defining what all of the droll, bland looks that Derek gave actually meant, because surely, _surely_ Derek wasn't just irritated 24/7.

“I'm mad at him, okay?” Stiles flopped back on his pillows, grimacing and clutching at the stitch in his side from where his cracked rib was sending the very clear signal of “ouch.” He pulled the hem of his shirt up with the other, making a pained face as he carefully touched along the purple edge of a huge bruise.

Derek shook his head, exhaling softly. He worked his fingers under Stiles' hand at his side, softly pressing the warm flat of his palm against Stiles' bare skin.

“Hey! What-- You can't-- I'm not--!”

Derek made a shushing noise at him and looked down at his hand; he pressed firmly down and Stiles hitched in his breath, expecting it to hurt, but it didn't. Instead, he saw what looked like sickly black ink oozing out of his body and into Derek's veins, then disappearing. And taking away the dull agony that had been thudding in the background, too, leaving nothing but the comforting warmth (and something he wasn't even going to think about right now) soothing where it had previously ached.

“What the were-voodoo?” Stiles panted and went stock still as he looked up at Derek, completely and utterly shocked. Shocked because the pain – which evidently was physically a black ick that just got hoovered out of his body – was mostly gone, one, and because Derek's hand was still on his side, two, and Derek hadn't ever really touched him voluntarily before. Not like, you know, gentle hand caressing touching. And, okay, three, it felt really nice to have someone touching him in a non-beating way for a change, especially someone that wasn't a relative and by someone that looked like he should be on the cover of a magazine like “Brooding Digest” or “Mopey Leather Bros Monthly.”

And, yeah, okay that said attractive person had his hand on his bare skin under his shirt, which wasn't something that had ever happened to Stiles before that wasn't parent or nurse related. Which was why his breath was coming short and his heart was pounding. The, um, newness of all of that under clothing touching with a hot dude. Oh, God. He was fucking straddling both roads, wasn't he? He was not mentally or emotionally equipped just then to deal with his possibly-straddling-okay-looking-close-to-definitely-fucking-straddling the sexual attraction gender roads that stretched before him. Straddling and fucking were two more words he told himself to stop thinking about while Derek had his hand under his shirt, only needing to swing one leg over before he was straddling St--

Oh god. This was _Derek._ Mr. push Stiles up against the door and stare at his mouth and be all up in personal space smelling a-freaking-mazing and... Nope. No way. Just...what?

“Scott never helped you like this?” Derek asked, his thumb gently working back and forth along the sensitive skin stretched over the rounded edge of Stiles' lowest rib bone and Stiles felt hysterical laughter bubbling up inside because he was now thinking “bone” and this was officially the weirdest night of his life. Okay, it was seriously weird before what with Jackson almost becoming a freaking _dragon_ according to the very helpful and utterly terrifying .gif set that apparently-not-dead-Peter had texted him after all was said and done and how the hell did he even have Stiles' cell number?

But still. 

“Uh,” Stiles, feeling shaky all over and starting to squirm under the heat of Derek's hand as it _pet him_ and the laser beam focus Derek had on Stiles' exposed belly, couldn't help letting some of that hysteria out in the form of a strangled laugh because he was pretty sure that he was borderline losing control of...what he didn't want to admit. But control was definitely slipping. Jeez-us, Derek had, like, super nice hands. Firm. Strong. _Christ._

“No, he did not ever do this to me,” Stiles said, trying to keep perfectly still because Derek was still gently rubbing his thumb back and forth along his skin and that needed to not ever, ever stop, Stiles decided. “That's...uh, not the kind of bros we are. We're more of the delete internet history when one of us dies type of friends. Not the, um, hands under shirts type of friends.” 

Derek started, a confused look on his face. Not a new face to catalog, Stiles noticed. 

“Did you want to keep hurting?” Derek asked. He took his hand away and Stiles almost whimpered at the loss of pleasant heat, wondering if the pain would come back and would Derek freak out if he asked him to please please put his hand back. For science.

“No! I just... I don't know. Um.” The pain didn't come back so there went that excuse. Stiles bit his lip and tried to school his expression into something neutral and not desperate for more belly rubs. “So...thanks?”

“You're welcome.”

Derek stood, shoving his awesome, good-feeling-giving hands back in his jacket pockets again, and Stiles internally groaned at the automatic thought of what those good-feeling-giving hands might do to other places that only Stiles had gone before and he was seriously losing it and needed to stop thinking about Derek and any of his body parts. Oh god. He couldn't even fall back on thoughts of Lydia to reset his brain, not after tonight.

Derek leaned towards him and said with a small grin, “It's a pack thing.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Stiles gave him a smarmy grin and shot finger guns at Derek, like “Hey, just two bros making each other feel good with our hands, there's nothing weird about that, and I hope you can't smell my lusty thoughts about you because I would then want to die.” They were complicated finger guns.

At Derek's grin that Stiles decided meant “I'm possibly fond of you and not going to hate you any longer,” he sagged back into his pillows, Stiles smiled and realized that he felt grateful all of a sudden. Felt far less alone and miserable than he had before Derek showed up, which was something that he would have never believed would be possible even an hour before. Derek...genuinely cared that he was okay after everything with Gerard, and more importantly, he realized, Derek was someone that he could actually talk to about all of it. He obviously couldn't tell his dad, and it wasn't like Scott had bothered to actually check in with him. Fortunately, Derek was here and, more importantly, had the same frame of reference; it was a small and exclusive club, the Tortured By The Argents And Lived To Tell About It Club. (Seriously strict and painful rules for joining, though. Personally, Stiles thought the initiation fee was overrated. And terrifying.)

Mostly he was just grateful that Derek had come over for something other than to slam him against a wall and demand answers before disappearing into the night like the goddamn Batman. And it was equally as awesome that Derek didn't want to ask Stiles' opinion on how to make Allison blah blah who freaking cared right then, honestly? So, okay, he was still feeling a little unsettled with how nice it was having Derek sit next to him on his bed in the dark, putting his large, awesome voodoo-powered hand under Stiles' shirt and maybe he could come back sometime and do that again but definitely lower and not just under his shirt, maybe, and that was a train of thought that needed to end quickly because what the _hell._

Aside from the whole excitement over hands in new places and apparent road straddling, he also realized that he finally didn't feel so angry like he had earlier. Actually, he didn't feel angry at all, which was funny because he had just hung out with Derek “I seethe for an actual living” Hale, who was typically the source of what made Stiles angry. Well, him and Greenberg.

“Um, Derek?”

Derek swallowed deliberately, his eyes guarded all of a sudden, and walked over to one of Stiles' vintage concert posters, very interested in it all of a sudden. “Hm?”

“Hey. Seriously.” Stiles pushed himself up to sitting, glad that it didn't hurt at all to do so. “I... Thank you.”

Derek looked down at the carpet and nudged wheel of Stiles' computer chair with his boot. He nodded stiffly a few times. “Welcome.”

“You do that a lot, you know.”

Derek looked up at that, confused. He tilted his head to one side in question.

Stiles smiled at that, chuffing out a short laugh because he so wanted to make a dog cocking his head and raising an ear joke but he'd made some serious progress here and didn't want to jinx it. “You help. A lot.”

“So do you.”

“Well, that's because I'm awesome like that,” he said, back to his goofy grin. And score one for Stilinski, because Derek smiled back. Mr. Doom and Gloom actually looked less like a hungry Grizzly and more like a slightly miffed teddy bear. He totally wanted to call Scott later and get him to call Derek “Miffy the Mopey Bear” to his face because Scott could withstand being tackled and gouged by werewolf claws and Stiles, you know, couldn't. 

And for the first time since he dragged himself up to the front door after the hunter thugs sped away, he thought about Scott in a good way. In a “you're still my best friend” way. Because come on. It was Scott. He messed up all the time. That was part of his charm. 

He probably would have gotten there eventually, but Derek sort of sped things along. Man, Derek was on a roll. Before he could say as much, he surprised himself with a face-cracking yawn.

“You should get some sleep,” Derek said, nodding his chin towards Stiles' abdomen. “You need to heal.” He moved to the window to leave.

“Dude. Seriously. I'm going to start calling you Edward Cullen if you don't cut it out with the creepy window stuff.” He started wiggling around on top of his blankets, burrowing in to be more comfortable. He noticed that Derek watched him intently, and it wasn't one of his frustrated, irritated, or confused faces. In-teresting.

“People across the street see me leaving your front door at two in the morning, your dad is going to hear about it,” Derek said, raising the window.

“Good point. Carry on, my good Cullen.”

Derek rolled his eyes, making Stiles laugh. He was so tired, though, that it came out a little breathless. The smile on his face was slow to bloom, but it was there. “Derek. I'll talk to Scott.”

Half-way out of the window, Derek turned and ducked his head back inside the room, and there was a smile on his face that Stiles wasn't quite sure how to define. It made his chest ache and his breathing hitch, though, because it was maybe the softest he'd ever seen Derek look before. Like how Derek must have looked before Kate Argent ripped his life to burned, charred shreds. Stiles kind of wanted to see Derek look like that all the time because _damn._

“Thanks,” Derek said. He looked down for a moment, almost like he was trying to convince himself to keep talking because he gave this heavy sort of sigh and looked back directly into Stiles' eyes, and yep, that was definitely a good look on Derek, all nice and cuddly and not maim-y. “I'll be in touch.”

Derek vanished into the darkness before Stiles could come back with anything, which was a blessing, really, because the way his brain was jumping the gun and his filter was close to dissolving, it would have been a comeback about touching and pants and my, what soft lips you have and did that frown go all the way down which didn't even make any _sense_ and it was a real fortunate thing for one Stiles Stilinski that he had a ridiculous crush on a guy that could disappear before Stiles fully inserted his foot into his mouth.

Oh god. He had a full-blown crush on Derek freaking Hale. He turned onto his stomach, burying his face into his pillow with a groan. Evidently he had a type: hot, emotionally closed off, and way out of his league. And as it turns out, apparently he was non-exclusive with gender. Hey, hot was hot. And Derek? Definitely hot. And...apparently nice? Possibly cuddly?

He had a full-blown “oh my god, why do I do this to myself?” crush on the Alpha werewolf who didn't try to kill or eat him once that night. In fact, said Alpha werewolf had actually given Stiles belly scritches and a pep talk and made Stiles stop feeling so damned pissed off. Derek did that.

He-- It's just that-- Whoa.

Stiles flailed his arm out until he hit the switch to his bedside lamp and curled up to sleep, his mind unable to think about anything other than Derek having come to see him, making him feel stupid good and not a little horny as a result.

 _Still_ not the weirdest thing that happened that night.  But it was close.

**Author's Note:**

> ([redacted] I cannot control where my fanworks' metadata is placed, even though I wish it to remain here. If I had a choice, my fanworks would remain in the realm of fandom in which I place it, aka non-corporate owned review sites such as GR. Personal review/rec lists are not to be considered the same thing and are something with which I have no issue.)


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